Sports: IMS dominates in local track meet See B1
THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
www.iolaregister.com
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Metal dealer talks trash, treasures
By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
I
f Martians ever do visit our blue planet, there’s a good case for taking them to Ray’s Metal Depot as evidence of what industrial man has been up to all these years. At an hour-long talk at the Iola Public Library — titled “Junk?” — in which Ray Maloney spoke to a small crowd about the history and impact of recycling in America, the owner-operator of the LaHarpe-based scrapyard touched on the many items he buys and sells out at the 24-acre section of land along Highway 54, known affectionately — especially by middle-aged men with a certain lust for home improvement — as “Ray-mart.” A partial list of the recyclable items mentioned Tuesday evening, many of which Maloney illustrated with slides, include: aluminum cans; copper; zinc; insulated wire, including strings of Christmas lights; all kinds of brass (“here are some valves, tubing, a couple of faucets, brass shell casings, there’s a French Horn”); transmissions; lawn chairs; mobile home siding; lawnmowers (“best thing we ever did was start saving these mowers — sell a heck of a lot of these things”); electric motors; TV antennas; wheels; storm windows; coat racks; ACSR wire; pots, pans; light fixtures;
Fiscal, social conservatives at odds over gay rights By DAVID A. LIEB The Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Republican lawmakers upset about the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage have advanced measures in about a dozen states this year that could strengthen protections for those who refuse on religious grounds to provide services to same-sex couples. The bills could benefit court clerks, photographers, florists, bakers, wedding-hall operators and others who say gay matrimony goes against their beliefs. For a party already being torn apart by the presidential contest, the state legislative efforts have exposed deep rifts between the GOP’s social conservatives and its pro-business wing. Business leaders worry that such measures will allow discrimination and scare away companies and major events. So far, only a few proSee AT ODDS | Page A5
Group seeks probe of elections official By ROXANA HEGEMAN The Associated Press
Ray Maloney of Ray’s Metal Depot talks about recyclable items during a presentation titled “Junk?” Tuesday at the Iola Public Library. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY “Russell Stover was bringing me a lot of aluminum foil for a while”; stainless steel; cast iron; car batteries (“I’ll give 10 cents a pound for those”); “here’s a big pile of cars that we mashed down”; oil field pipe; steel turnings; “engine blocks, hubcaps, more pipe”; spindles; “farm scraps”; car starters; oil cans; tires; motorcycles; old fencing; saws;
“then, for you ladies, here we go” — Maloney summons the next slide — “yard art!” (which is to say, a giant wheel, a clothesline pole, part of an old wooden wagon, and an enormous ball of barbed wire); chain link fencing, which lay in Ray’s lot, side by side, in thick rolls, like great silver burritos; 55-gallon burn barrels, which you can buy
for $10 a drum; tires; cinder blocks; H-beams, I-beams; “and then, of course, there’s our miscellaneous stuff....” Maloney is funny and articulate in person, and modest, probably unduly so, in describing the business he created 25 years ago. “We’re really small,” he insists, deSee JUNK | Page A5
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A nonprofit public advocacy group c a l l e d Wednesday for an i nve s t i g a tion of a top federal elections official in Brian Newby the wake of a media report about his communications with one of the nation’s leading advocates of voting restrictions. Washington, D.C.,-based Allied Progress provided to The Associated Press a letter is said will be sent today to the Inspector General of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission asking it to look into communications between that agency’s executive director, Brian Newby, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The nonpartisan group calls itself a grassroots organization that aims to hold special interest groups accountable, and has taken up causes as diverse as See NEWBY | Page A3
Ultimate paradox: Nation’s ‘breadbasket’ in reality a food desert By ANDY MARSO KHI News Service
Residents of St. John packed a room in late January for an emotional, standingroom-only town hall meeting. A week later Topekans gathered for an eerily similar meeting. The two groups — one from a town of about 1,300, the other from a city of 127,000 — were separated by about 200 miles and an urban-versus-rural lifestyle divide. But they were united in their frustration over an increasingly common struggle in Kansas: the loss of their local grocery store. In a state that prides itself on feeding the world, residents in many areas are limited in what they can feed themselves. “What’s left is more or less convenience stores with the high-sugar foods and the unhealthy stuff,” said Ron Brown, a vegetable farmer from the Fort Scott area. Brown is chairman of a Local Food and Farm Task Force established by the Legislature that is seeking to bring more fresh produce to the those areas, while at the same time cultivating a new facet of the Kansas agriculture economy. Brown, past president of the Kansas Vegetable Growers Association, will tell you it’s actually an old facet the task force is trying to revive. “Kansas at one time was a giant, really, in fruit and veg-
CREATIVE OUTLET PHOTO
etable production,” Brown said. In the 1920s, Kansans grew about 65,000 acres of fruits and vegetables, including potatoes. At that time farming was not only a way to make a living, but a way of life. “Back in those days they about had to grow their own to survive,” Brown said, “and back in those days most people lived on a farm, too.” Now the state grows about one-tenth that much produce, despite having almost twice as many residents. Focus on commodity crops
Over the decades, family farms gave way to large-scale agriculture more focused on commodity crops like wheat and soybeans. Kansas became a major player in those markets, ranking seventh in the nation in agriculture exports by 2012. But that same year the state’s consumers were spending about 90 percent of their food budget on imported items. And, according to the Kansas Rural Center, in the five years prior to 2012, 82 of the 213 supermarkets operating in communities with populations below 2,500 closed
Quote of the day
“Acorns were good until bread was found.”
Vol. 118, No. 113
75 Cents
— Francis Bacon, British philosopher
their doors. All of which led to an irony that Brown laid out for legislators: trucks full of food heading to out-of-state processing plants and driving past rural communities increasingly in need of more fresh, unprocessed options. Brown’s task force, established in 2014, released a 56-page report in December providing a number of recommendations. They included adding resources specifically geared to specialty crop growing and local food marketing See FOOD | Page A3
Hi: 71 Lo: 37 Iola, KS